Knuckles (soft version)

This, again, is a children's game, although it is actually something else that goes through both East
and Western civilisation - a test of the speed of your reactions. For example people in pubs try to flick
up and catch ever increasing numbers of beer mats. There are many speed of reaction games -
greatest of which are the video games that are flooding the market at the moment. Or pin-ball
machines. It is a very useful direct exercise for children to test the speed of their reactions and to help
them to improve their reaction time. In this we just use the simple device of one player putting his or
her hands under the other's hands and then try and tap the hands on top. The 'top' player has to pull
back his or her hands to avoid them being tapped. This is a fascinating game that has apparently
gone out of fashion with children now, but whenever I play with a child they want to go on playing it
forever. They love playing with their speed of reaction. That's not really why I am playing the game at
this point. I am trying to expose the different actions of the front and the back, or stem, brain. The
natural way to do it is to watch your opponent's hands and because of that you are using your eyes
and in so doing you cut off the back brain, the part that controls the muscles and you throw it on the
front brain which is the conceptualising part of the brain. Watching the hands you see them move and
say to yourself 'they are moving, I must get out of the way' by which time you have sore knuckles! It is
very important that an actor plays on the reaction rather than the action. There are other exercises
like this. You don't look into the other person's eyes, you let them look into yours. You play off their
reaction to you. It is like driving a car. When you begin it is hopeless because you are trying to do
everything consciously: changing gear, turning the wheel and pressing down the accelerator. Once
you have learned to drive you can operate unconsciously. The intentional part of the brain
disconnects from the muscles of the body and the back part of the brain takes over. When jumping
along stepping stones or crossing the road if you are too conscious you make mistakes, whereas for
the most part our back brain instructs our body as to how it can get us where we want to be. In this
game I am trying to introduce them to being aware of using the back rather than the front brain.